Call centers use a number of call agents to service a large volume of calls. Call centers may operate to provide customers with technical support, sales execution and support, and other information and services.
High quality of service and call throughput are desired traits for agents and call centers. Call throughput is easily measured based on a number of calls handled during a period of time, but quality of service may be difficult to evaluate.
Prior art methods of assessing the service quality of call center agents include recording and randomly reviewing calls, or asking each caller to complete a survey after the call. Random review of calls adds expense for oversight, and it often only samples a small portion of calls. A problem with surveys is that the results can be skewed toward positive reviews, as happier callers are more likely to respond to surveys. Also, the apparent scoring scale used by different reviewers may vary. Accordingly, improved methods of assessing of call center agent performance are desirable.
One way to assess agent performance is to obtain a measurement called an issue resolution (IR) rate. The issue resolution rate is typically gathered by surveying customers at the end of each call with a question such as “did the agent solve your problem?” Since participation in the survey is voluntary, relatively few customers typically participate, resulting in a true IR rate for only a small portion of the call center's total calls. Thus, when using prior art assessment methods, the resulting IR rate may not be a reliable indicator of call center agent performance.
This document describes methods and systems that address some of the problems described above, and/or additional issues.